


Defiance

by kerricarri



Series: a cosmic horror love story [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, Dalish Culture, Dalish Psychology, Experimental Style, F/M, Headcanon, POV Second Person, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 11:46:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10741074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerricarri/pseuds/kerricarri
Summary: How does a loyal Dalish elf transition into a defiant outsider? Into the head of the Inquisition?Personal headcanon for the Female Mage Lavallen background. It examines the psychology behind being the First to an isolationist clan and the conflict that can occur from that. This series is also an overall experiment that tries to make 2nd person POV stylistically interesting.





	Defiance

**Author's Note:**

> A short experimental fic that gives the broad strokes of my Lavellan's character arc, but it can stand alone from the rest of the series.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy.

 

Stay in the clan. There's nothing but the clan. Trust no one outside the clan. There is only the clan. 

 

(Even before the Breach there was never a _you_.)

 

There is no future with the shems. There is only grief and baggage and history. Learn your tales. Recite them back. (You are nothing without the clan.) The Dales warbles its heartfelt song of homecoming slaughter, as the humans laugh and chant and sing. The primary lesson to take away here is the trait of defiance. Internalize it. Learn it. Flaunt your pride, your identity, when it rests only in the reverence of ancient warriors who defended the ancestral Dales. Compare them to the scheming, traitorous wretches of mankind. Judge them. Find them wanting. (Never mind the rush of hypocrisy in killing them first.) Beware the Holy War. Beware the human tendency toward fanaticism and belief, heretics put to the sword. Devote instead your allegiance to the Creators and sing a song of fantastical devotion instead. You are nothing more than a repository of faith and knowledge in service to your gods. (Your clan does not know a thing called irony.)

 

Or at least that's what the histories tell you, what the stories say, what the culture says you must to do in order to be a good proper elf instead of some foundling whelp of a flat-ear. This is what the narrative of the proud and roaming free proclaim to be: The Dalish. They cling to it, that pride. This label. It is all they have. They submit, never. They admit to wanting more, never. To want more is to shame, be shamed, take on shame. To do so otherwise is forbidden. (A taste of the forbidden. You just want a taste, just one little taste.)

 

You serve the clan. The clan does not serve you. Remember your duty. You must. There is nothing else. And never, ever, is there a future with a shem. Instead you are to be defined by the Other—never yourself, never just each other. You are supposed to be a leader. You are one of the People. Act like it. Focus on your training. You are never to be bowed, broken, ever. You are to be the First of your clan, and then its Keeper, and when that day comes it will be your duty to submit. You are meant for nothing more than to take your elder's place. (You are nothing without the clan.)

 

Remembrance is a bittersweet yoke upon your shoulders. Of all the years you yearned to fulfill the mold. Of the memories in which you reach out toward a companion’s back, turned from you, with a faltering grasp. Of the instances in which Keeper looked upon you, Keeper stared at you, Keeper found you wanting, and so with each twitch and thinning of her lips you knew she found you lacking.

 

What do you lack? Deference to your elders, no. You've always had that. Desperately, furiously, you've chased that. But what you lack is the conviction to know less. To be content with nothing more. After all, there are no borders and boundaries beyond these mountains and thresholds, this sea, these forests that are worth knowing. Never is there a willing brush with an outsider except for the rare visit or two to trade in coin, leathers, and fur. Grim necessity, yet that grim duty has never fallen to you. You are to be cloistered and protected instead as a neophyte in learning. You are never to leave these forests. You are never to travel alone. You are to finish your training. You are to submissively take heed of lessons and plans. You are the First. You are the inheritor of blood and tradition—the living, breathing, growing embodiment of your culture and clan. You are nothing more than what you represent. (Where does the clan end and you begin?)

 

You must not fall. You must not falter. You must not be exposed. You must not leave the forest for shems are a taint upon the world their sickly, quickling nature would threaten your own. They are infection. They are Blight. They herald sickness and war, famine and drought, the broken wheels of an aravel spinning in the sand. Human roads do not welcome you. Human soldiers always find you. You are the First. You are not to leave the forest. You are not to leave the clan. Stay at your Keeper's side. Your people's hopes rest in you. Your people have eyes on you.

 

(They are so afraid of shems.)

 

You lack conviction. You lack their cowed fear.

 

You want more. 

 

They say there's no future outside the clan. They say there is no future with a shem.

 

They say a lot of things (so claim a lover instead).

 

As you skim your lips across a broad jaw roughened with hair and stubble and sweat—the musk of shem lust, the ardor of taboo—rather than the sweet boyish mien of an elvhen boy's cheek, your lips twist. They curve. You smile.

 

The Commander smiles back.

 

 


End file.
